The photo policy: what a portrait here promises, and what it never shows

An evening dress, an interior, a window, a street at dusk. The portraits show how a companion looks and carries herself on an evening out, and nothing is posed to suggest more than company. No image is published without her agreement, and every one appears on the introductions exactly as she approved it.

Before a file opens, Octavia meets the companion and holds each image beside her: face, height, hair and build. Anything that no longer matches, a colour grown out or a length cut short, is set aside. The age, height and languages on her file come from that meeting and from her identification, never from a questionnaire. About the house explains how that first meeting comes about.

Each face is gently blurred. It protects her privacy in a city where she has a life beyond these pages, and it is a courtesy to you as well: a guest seen with her in a lobby is seen with no one anybody can place. The likeness lives in the height, the hair, the build and the manner, which is exactly what the comparison checks.

Appearances change, so the check is repeated whenever a companion alters her look noticeably. A set that has drifted is withdrawn until new portraits replace it, however flattering the old ones were. A file is never padded with stale images for the sake of a fuller page.

Nudity, and posing that suggests it. Pictures from a stock library or from another woman's portfolio. Faces or figures produced or altered by software. Any portrait kept on a file after it has stopped resembling her.

A companion may ask for a single portrait, or her whole file, to come down whenever she chooses, and she owes nobody a reason; the request is carried out promptly. How the site treats your own details is set out separately in the privacy notice.